I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
From the Holy Bible
This is a wonderful promise from God’s Word, but did you read it carefully? We have to ask “according to God’s will” in order to receive the answer that we desire. How do we know God’s will? I submit to you that we know it by spending time with Him, reading His Word and just talking to Him. It’s fantastic to be able to pray and have our prayers answered! But what is better is to be able to sit quietly and just talk to the Father.
www.bible.com/111/mat.18.20.niv
When I feel defeated or discouraged, I tell my husband and he prays. Often, I call our daughter and she prays with us, too. When I am ill, or when I fall and get hurt or when I just feel lonely, I ask my husband and daughter for prayer. I used to call or text our pastor, but we are in the middle of changing churches and the new pastors don’t know me well, so I don’t feel comfortable sharing a lot with them yet. Nevertheless, I do have prayer warriors to call. The best news, though, is that when I am totally alone, I can call on the Lord. Jesus is always with me because He has sent His Comforter, the Holy Spirit who is constantly with me. So, when I am driving and get scared (because I don’t drive very much anymore), I send up a prayer and know that the Lord is hearing me. I don’t have to be in a big crowd or even next to a phone to send up a prayer and know that my Father in Heaven hears me and is working on an answer for me. This morning, I awakened with pain in my shoulder and my hip from my physical therapy yesterday. Balancing on one leg is hard for me, even before I broke my foot. But I have to work on strengthening it, so that is one of the exercises I do. Before I even got out of bed, I praised God for a new day and asked for healing for my aching parts. My husband was sleeping soundly next to me, so I didn’t wake him up to join me in prayer. I just prayed, knowing that the Comforter was with me and would help me get out of bed and start a new day. Two or three isn’t many, and with Jesus with you, that means you can pray all by yourself in your prayer closet.
Prayer requests for you prayer warriors out there: Angie, with cancer on her spine and a friend named John who is having open heart surgery tomorrow
Thanks for the prayers and support. If you need prayer, just let me know in the comments and I will pray for you. God bless you in this new day. Expect great things from God!
www.bible.com/1171/psa.21.6.mev
Read and think about this verse. Really think about it. God places blessings on us FOREVER. We are blessed here on earth and we will continue to be blessed in Heaven. Therefore, we can rejoice because God’s presence is always with us, working in us to do His will on the earth. This is a promise that I can relate to since I have felt especially blessed to be alive six years after a massive stroke. I am blessed with a husband who loves me, three children who are strong and healthy and nine grandchildren who are precocious, talented and so lovable! So, I am blessed. Everyday when I awaken, I thank God for a new day to walk with Him here on earth. Are you blessed? If you are reading this, you are blessed!
Be blessed today, my friends, so that you can be a blessing.
www.bible.com/1171/psa.20.7.mev
In the United States of America, we have a tendency to trust our might, our power, our strong economy and usually our President. Those things are our “chariot” and our “horse,” but in reality, only God can be trusted. I recall the great Egyptian army that rode fearlessly into the Red Sea, chasing the Israelites, with their chariots and horses. All of them drowned, wiped out when the Almighty God returned the sea to its bed. It is only when we trust in the Lord our God that we can rest easily, knowing that we are truly safe. There is no government that can save us. There is no mighty army, navy, air force or even marine corps that can save us. Most of us also have to remember that we can’t save ourselves, although we are sometimes determined to try and to set ourselves up as our own god. The only Name to remember is that of the Lord God. It is He Who saves us: from our sin, from the temptations of the world and ultimately, from death. Thus this Scripture brings me great comfort and I hope that you find comfort in this promise, too. It is God who is totally trustworthy to take us through the battles of life and to eternity with Him.
I pray God’s blessing on you today, no matter where you go or what you do. Nothing will happen today that you and God cannot handle together!
Just a reminder that man is without excuse for rejecting the knowledge about God’s existence. The skies above us declare His glory! Bless His Holy Name!
May you have a blessed weekend and remember to look around at all that God has created for us to enjoy.
From my devotional this morning, I got this promise. Isn’t it wonderful to know that no matter where you are or what is happening in your life, the Lord God is with you? He is the same Lord who died for you on the cross, the same Lord who loves you with an eternal love, a love that no one can change or take away. He saves! Hallelujah!
As I read, I related to being a small child and waiting anxiously for my father to come home from work. No matter what had happened that day, daddy always knew what to say and how to calm my fears. Now, broaden the scope and imagine that our Heavenly Father is waiting for us to call on Him. We don’t have to anxiously sit and wait for His arrival; He is always right there beside us. In my mind, I recall my daddy picking me up and holding me and telling me that he loved me. Those moments with my father were worth all that had happened that day: the hurt of being different from the other children because I couldn’t run and play due to my health conditions, the anguish of being rejected by my mother, and the multitudes of other pains that small children go through and think we just can’t live through them. I survived because I knew my daddy loved me and would be home soon to cuddle me. And when I began to go to church, the comforting arms of my earthly father were replaced by the everlasting comfort of my Heavenly Father. By that time, I was living alone and needed to know His love since my daddy was hours away and I could not share my daily frustrations with him. But God was there! He was there for me all along, just waiting for me to ask Him to come alongside me and be that One that I can always count on.
God quiets us with His love. He loves us totally, completely and unconditionally. I can choose to leave Him, but He will not leave me. He sees me as worthy, as beautiful and as a necessary part of His creation. The God of the Universe looked down on earth and thought it needed one of me. Awesome thought, right? Of course, it is also an awesome responsibility to fulfill His purposes for me during the years He has established for me here. Nevertheless, while I am here, He rejoices over me. Just as my daddy used to sing songs (“The Church in the Wild Wood” was a favorite of his) that showed me his love for me, imagine the Heavenly Father singing songs over you, not just when you need comfort, but just because He loves you. What song is in your heart today? Imagine the Father singing that to you. That thought makes my whole being quiver with anticipation for what the new day will bring and what the Father will do for me and through me in it!
I like the mental images that come to my mind when I meditate on these two verses. I added them to my promise journal so that I can look back and remember. That’s what life is all about sometimes, a series of memories that mean something important to us. When I am remembering the afternoon minutes that I spent with my daddy, I also recall the many times that God has shown me grace and mercy and love…lots of love. Can I do any less for others who are hurting and need a Mighty Warrior to save them and a loving God to calm and rejoice over them with songs? We are sent to tell others because we have a great truth that should never be hidden. The world is hurting, and we have just the right remedy…a relationship with the Lord!
Be blessed today so that you can be a blessing.
www.bible.com/1171/psa.18.35.mev
This Scripture spoke to me this morning because of the word shield to show salvation. Doesn’t salvation shield us from the worst that the enemy can do to us? The enemy of our soul thinks that he can defeat us with death, but we have the shield of salvation. It’s like a piece of invincible armor that no weapon of the enemy can pierce.
Then, the second part of the Scripture didn’t make a lot of sense to me, so I looked it up in several versions. The one I liked the best exchanged the word “gentleness” for the word “humility.” It is Jesus’s humility that was our example and through following his example, we become great leaders in the advancement of His Word. It is not that we ourselves are great. Jesus is great through us when we humbly allow Him to use us to reach others. Just as Jesus humbled Himself and came to earth as a man, so we humble ourselves before the King of Glory and ask for His will to be done in our lives. It in only in submitting to His will that we can become great. Our greatness is not in our own strength or to “toot our own horns.” It is the Lord to whom we owe everything and to Him that we give all honor and praise. Anything we do that gives us praise should be reflected right back to Him.
So that was my meditation for today. I hope that you all have a blessed day, using the shield to protect yourself from the enemy of our soul and His example of gentleness to approach others with the Gospel.
www.bible.com/1171/exo.15.11.mev
The same God who parted the Red Sea and then sent it rolling back over Pharoah and his entire army, the same God who sent His Son to die on the cross for us and who raised Him from the dead after three days, the same God who promises eternal life to those who believe in Him and follow Him…that is the God whom we serve! This brings forth a heartfelt Hallelujah! He is the same yesterday, today and forever! Amen!
I read a devotional this morning about Zaccheus climbing the tree to see Jesus. The devotional focused on the tree; God put it there knowing that one day a small man would need to climb it to see his son.
The devotional charged me (and other readers, of course) to think of all of the people who have lifted you up to see Jesus. For me, there was first my neighbor Verna and her fiancée Chris. Then, there was our first pastor Dean, the man who taught me so much about studying the Bible; his favorite saying was to “be a Berean.” There was Dub, a rotund, happy pastor in South Carolina who taught me the joy of worshipping freely. There was the pastor in Virginia Beach who moved me and Hope into base housing when it became available after Harry heads already left for his deployment. I was feeling really sorry for myself because I was pregnant and had no idea how I was going to manage to move but I knew that I had a limited time before the base housing office would just pass over my name. Help came just in time! There were the people who have given us groceries when we were low on funds, the neighbor who ran across the street to take me to the E.R. with my young son whose arm was streaming blood and I couldn’t get my car started. So many trees who have given me a boost in life!
But that is not the end of the story. I have been boosted over and over again, able to climb above the problems because of others who have been there for me, just at the right time. They have been the “trees” in my life. In similar fashion, I would like to think that I have boosted others, but I don’t want to go through incidents that would try to persuade you of my being a tree. God will be the judge of that. I just want to leave you with the question. Are you a tree? Do you help others up, so that they can see above the circumstances? If we are always wandering around with the lost people and never giving them a boost to see Jesus, they may never see Him. We may be the exact tree that God put in a certain place at a certain time for a certain person. We need to look for opportunities to be a tree, stand firm for God’s Word, and like a tree, point to the Heavens, right up to Jesus!
Have a blessed day, my friends, and may you prosper even as your soul prospers.
www.bible.com/111/psa.139.13-14.niv
Today is the annual March for Life, taking place throughout the country. You can join in virtually by going to March for Life. It has never been more important that we stand for the sanctity of life, because the President in the Oval Office is signing executive orders making life cheap and easy to “get rid of”, even at taxpayer’s expense. I have heard all of my life that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. I’m standing for life! When the President’s press secretary was asked how he could support abortion as a Catholic, her reply was that he is a “devout Catholic.” Really? Does the Catholic Church approve of abortions now? Actually, killing the unborn is a platform of the Democratic Party, supporting Planned Parenthood and the millions of abortions that this organization performs in the guise of healthcare. It’s not a choice! It’s a baby! Thus, I’m asking for you to attend the virtual March for Life, financially support the organization if you can, support Dr. James Dobson who has fought for life for decades. In my mind, it is absolute evil to sacrifice an unborn baby to Molech, which is what I consider abortion to be, a sacrifice to a demonic god. We are called to be salt so that the world will desire to drink of the pure water of life. Let’s be salt today!
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 